Last Monday on my trade day, I ended up at the Museum of Fine Arts in downtown St. Pete. It happened to be the day that the Venerable Losang Samten, a renowned Tibetan scholar and former Buddhist monk started his sand mandala in the museum. 
A sand mandala is an incredibly
intricate work of art created by sand that takes days and days to complete. He
used a ruler and a compass and math and drew out his plan on a huge board. He
did a chant and blessed the sand and then allowed the museum visitors to add
tiny amounts of sand to the mandala. He then spent six hours a day for the next
two weeks (still ongoing) creating this incredible work of art. My daughter was
so enthralled by the chanting and the artistry and the math and the sand!
(she’s a little artsy...)
On this Saturday, Jan 16, Losang
Samten (and others) will “dismantle” it. Sweep it away. Two weeks of math,
science, and art. Gone.
Isn’t that what it feels like in
the classroom sometimes? We work day in and day out to create something amazing
and intricate and beautiful and then we sweep it all away and start over.
It can feel overwhelming and
frustrating and futile.
But it can be really, really
awesome when it’s “right”, in the “now”.
I am an artist. I am a scientist.
I am a social studies teacher.
M. Colleen Cruz, author of The
Unstoppable Writing Teacher, says this.
I
believe, as many people do, that teachers are both scientists and artists.
Yet, so
many of us, myself included, wish time and again that once we have learned
something, once we have mastered a lesson, a teaching method, a unit, a rubric,
a parent letter, that it should be preserved in amber -- never to be touched or
changed again. This is very understandable. You work so d*&% hard. Why
can’t our work be preserved and used again and again for always?
The answer is of course: we are scientists and artists. And just
as we would be horrified by the notion that a scientist today was still using
radioactive materials without protective equipment the way Marie Curie did, or
repelled by the notion of someone killing and stuffing an endangered animal to
paint it the way Audubon did, we should feel just as horrified by the notion
that a teacher in her thirtieth year would be teaching exactly the same things
in the same way as she did when she started. We have all heard stories about
those teachers. There are even sayings about them: “He’s been teaching the same
year for twenty-five years”
I know most of you aren't
teaching the same “year” for twenty five years. That's impractical, out of
date, and would possibly involve a filmstrip machine and a slide carousel from
1965. Plus - how would you make a scale for that's? (Ha!)
But we can all learn to live more
comfortably in the “ now” of what we do and to understand the relative impermanence
of our lessons. It's not that “those administrators” or “those coaches” or
“the big District Blobby Monster” are trying to come up with new ways of
teacher-torture. It's that the world changes. Kids change. Research teaches us
new things about education.
We build a new sand mandala,
which is a beautiful, perfect work of art, and then we start all over again.
For goodness sake, work smarter
not harder. Use the sand from the last mandala to build a new one. Don't
reinvent the wheel (ha!). But don't use the same old tire that's worn out,
either.
I don't have a garage in my house. The people
who lived there before me enclosed it into a big utility room. Or as I call it,
the futility room. Because it's futile to try to keep it permanently
clean and organized. It is a constant task to organize and rework the shelves,
containers, and miscellaneous stuff in there.
It's annoying, and always a mess.
But it's also a little bit of Harry Potter’s “room of requirement”. The room
turns into different things as I need them. This month I need a place to stash
all my holiday gift wrap, gifts, and whatnot? The futility room! Need an
extra bed for an additional houseguest? The futility room! Need a place
to organize tools and craft supplies? The futility room!
I hope as you think about the new
semester (and the new year), I hope you can find a little peace with the
impermanence of your craft, like the sand mandala. I hope you can reorganize
and update your tools out of necessity, like my futility room. I hope you don't
capture your lessons in Amber, never to be changed. I really hope you
aren't using radioactive materials like Marie Curie did. Or filmstrip machines
or slide carousels.
In second semester, as 2016
dawns, think about the art and science of your classroom. And update what you do,
knowing that the last sand mandala (or lesson)you created was incredibly
beautiful. And the next one will be too.
Use your artistic and scientific
sides to be more flexible and adaptive. It will pay off in your classroom.
What are your New Year's resolutions? Do you capture your lessons in amber or do you make new sand mandalas all the time? I love to hear what you're trying out, changing, and adapting this semester. Email me! Newmantr@pcsb.org
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